To separate the overlapped protein spots in two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) images, we proposed an auto-separating algorithm based on valley characteristics. Firstly, the marker-controlled watershed algorithm was used to detect the initial outlines of the object regions. Secondly, medial axis transform and hierarchical branch pruning method were applied to the main skeletons of the object regions, and each main skeleton was fitted into line segments to describe the overlap directions. Then, the 3-dimensional model of the object region was scanned on the normal planes of the line segments to find the valley locations. And finally, a validation model was adopted to construct separation lines. The experiments on 2 real scanned 2-DE images showed that the true overlap separate (TOSs) were 78.95% and 85.71%, respectively. The results indicated that the proposed algorithm was better than the existing algorithms and could be used in engineering practice.
Objectives Based on the Global Minimum Essential Requirement in Medical Education (GMER), we tried to use the theories and methods of “competency” as a reference to introduce the concept of “competency” into medical education in China and to investigate the skills that medical graduates need for their prospective clinical work. Methods According to a literature search and expert interviews, the Glossary of Medical Graduates’ Competencies was built to define the competencies needed by medical graduates. Students’ attitudes toward those competencies were surveyed by questionnaires. Factor analysis and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) were used to analyze the data and to build the Medical Graduates’ Competency Model. Results The competencies of medical graduates could be divided into six groups. The weighting of each competency group and specific competence was different. Conclusion The Medical Graduate Competency Model can be used to evaluate medical graduates’ capacities. It has significant reference value for medical education, in terms of the evaluation of medical graduates and the reform of teaching methods.
ObjectiveTo investigate the relationship between clinicopathologic characteristics of patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) and diabetes mellitus (DM), and to provide basis for individualized diagnosis and treatment.MethodsThe patients who underwent the first thyroid surgery in the Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University from January 1, 2017 to September 15, 2020 and were pathologically diagnosed as PTC were collected. According to the presence or absence of DM, the clinical features were compared.ResultsThere were 2859 patients without DM and 133 patients with DM in 2992 patients. In patients with or without DM, there were no differences in lymph node metastasis, multiple, bilateral tumors, and extrathyroid invasion between the two groups (P>0.05). However, compared with the PTC patients without DM, the proportion of women with DM was lower (58.65% versus 76.71%, P<0.01), the proportions of age >55 years old (92.48% versus 66.32%, P<0.01) and capsule invasion (67.21% versus 63.11%, P=0.04) with DM were higer. After adjusting for age and gender, the multivariate analysis showed that the risks of larger tumor and capsular invasion in the patients with DM was 1.51 times [95%CI (1.06, 2.16), P=0.02] and 1.75 times [95%CI (1.16, 2.64), P<0.01] respectively as compared with in the patients without DM.ConclusionsIn PTC patients with DM, proportion of women is lower, proportions of elderly population (age >55 years old) and patients with capsular invasion are higer, tumor is larger. Therefore, patients with DM must not neglect regular examination of thyroid morphology and function, and PTC patients should also pay attention to control of blood glucose.
Objective To study the differences of obstructive sleep apnea hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS)-related indexes between Uyghur and Han, and to provide evidence for the development of individualized treatment measures for different ethnic groups. Methods 224 Han OSAHS patients were collected from Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Chinese Medicine, and 178 Uygur OSAHS patients were collected from The First People’s Hospital of Kashi between January 2018 and December 2019. The collected data information included age, sex, nationality, body mass index (BMI), apnea hypopnea index (AHI), lowest oxygen saturation (LSaO2), OSAHS stage, mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), triglyceride (TG), total cholesterol (TC), high density lipoprotein (HDL), low density lipoprotein (LDL), fasting blood glucose (FBG), and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbAlc). After using propensity matching scores to reduce confounding factors, differences in above indicators between different nationalities were compared. Results The mean values of MCHC, TC and HDL in Uygur OSAHS patients were lower than those in Han patients at the same stage, and the mean values of LSaO2 and LDL in mild and severe Uygur OSAHS patients were lower than those in Han patients at the same stage, with statistically significant differences (all P<0.05). There were no significant differences in AHI, TG, FBG or HbAlc between Uygur and Han patients with OSAHS. Conclusion There are significant differences in LSaO2, LDL, MCHC, TC and HDL between Uygur and Han Chinese patients with OSAHS.
Objective
This study aimed to explore the relationship between serum lipid and lipoprotein levels and occurrence of breast cancer, and relationship between serum lipid and lipoprotein levels and clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer patients.
Methods
Clinical data of 788 patients with breast cancer and 395 patients with benign breast disease were retrospectively collected, who received treatment in The First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University from January 2014 to March 2016, and to explore the relationship between levels of total cholesterol (TC)/triglyceride (TG)/high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-c)/low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c) and occurrence of breast cancer/ clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer patients.
Results
① Influencing factors that affected the occurrence of breast cancer: multifactor logistic analysis showed that, height (OR=0.950, P=0.006), body mass index (OR=1.062, P=0.041), and serum LDL-c level (OR=1.349, P=0.016) were independent influencing factors for occurrence of breast cancer, people had high body mass index and higher level of serum LDL-c had high risk of breast cancer, but people had high height had low risk of breast cancer. ②Association analysis of serum lipid and lipoprotein levels and clinicopathological characteristics of breast cancer patients: the serum TC level was correlated with expression of progesteronereceptors (PR) and lymph node metastasis status (P<0.05), the serum TC levels of patients with negative-expression of PR and lymph node metastasis were slightly higher than that of patients with positive-expression of PR and non-lymph node metastasis; the serum TG level was associated with body mass index (P<0.05), that the serum TG level of patients with body mass index≥25 kg/m2was slightly higher than that of patients with body mass index<25 kg/m2; the serum HDL-c level was correlated with the body mass index and diameter of the tumor (P<0.05), the serum HDL-c level of the patients with body mass index≥25 kg/m2 was slightly lower than that of patients with body mass index<25 kg/m2, the serum HDL-c level of patients with the tumor diameter≤2 cm was slightly higher than that of patients with the tumor diameter >2 cm; the serum LDL-c level was correlated with body mass index, expression of estrogenreceptors (ER) and PR, and molecular typing ( P<0.05), the serum LDL-c level was slightly higher in patients with body mass index≥25 kg/m2, negative expression of ER and PR, and non Luminal type patients, comparing with patients with body mass index<25 kg/m2, positive expression of ER and PR, and Luminal type patients.
Conclusions
High level of serum LDL-c is strongly associated with occurrence of breast cancer, and levels of serum lipid and lipoprotein are associated with expression of hormone receptor, molecular type of breast cancer, and status of lymph node, but it needs further randomized controlled studies to confirm.
To increase efficiency of automated leucocyte pattern recognition using lower feature dimensions, a novel inter-class distinctive feature selection method for chromatic leucocyte images was proposed based on attribute hierarchical relationship. According to the attribute constraints in formal concept analysis, we established a knowledge representation and discovery method based on the hierarchical optimal diagram by defining attribute value and visual representation of optimized hierarchical relationship. It was applied to human peripheral blood leucocytes classification and 12 distinctive attributes were simplified from 60 inter-class attributes, which contributes significantly to reduced feature dimensions and efficient inter-class feature classification. Compared with the classical experimental data, the inter-class distinctive feature selection method based on hierarchical optimal diagram was proved to be usable and effective for six leucocyte pattern recognition.
Objective To investigate and analyze the clinical features of primary pulmonary malignant melanoma. Methods The medical records, imaging examinations, pathological results, treatment and prognosis of four primary pulmonary malignant melanoma (PMML) patients were retrospectively collected. In combination with 96 cases reported in the literature, a total of 100 patients with PMML were analyzed. Results Among the 100 PMML patients, there were 60 males (60.0%) and 40 females (40.0%), with an average age of 56.9±10.3 years. Common clinical symptoms were cough (60.0%), chest tightness or pain (18.0%), hemoptysis (16.0%), and dyspnea (11.0%). Distant metastasis was found in 30 cases (30.0%) at the time of consultation. The clinical stage of the first diagnosis and evaluation of the patients was stage Ⅰ in 7 cases (7.0%), stage Ⅱ in 24 cases (24.0%), stage Ⅲ in 13 cases (13.0%), stage Ⅳ in 39 cases (39.0%), and 17 cases (17.0%) did not mention a clear tumor stage. Thirty patients (30.0%) received comprehensive anti-tumor therapy, 53 patients (53.0%) received surgical resection, and 17 patients among them (17.0%) received postoperative adjuvant comprehensive therapy. The overall median survival time of PMML patients was 8.0 (2.0 - 14.4) months. The median survival time of stage Ⅳ PMML patients was 5.0 (3.1 - 6.9) months, which was significantly lower than 24.0 (6.0 - 32.0) months of stage Ⅱ patients (P<0.05) and 15.0 (0.6 - 29.4) months of stage Ⅲ patients (P<0.05). Further analysis showed that different treatment regimens had no significant effect on the median survival time of patients with stage Ⅳ PMML (P>0.05). Conclusions PMML has a high degree of malignancy and no specific clinical symptoms. It is mainly diagnosed by pathology. Surgical resection, postoperative adjuvant chemoradiotherapy or immunotherapy are the main treatment methods, but its overall prognosis is poor.
Aiming at the defects that the traditional pulse transit time (PTT) detection methods are sensitive to changes in photoplethysmography (PPG) signal and require heavy computation, we proposed a new algorithm to detect PTT based on waveform time domain feature and dynamic difference threshold. We calculated the PTT by using dynamic difference threshold method to detect the R-waves of electrocardiogram (ECG), shortening the main peak detection range in PPG signal according to the characteristics of the waveform time domain, and using R wave to detect the main peak of PPG signal. We used the American MIMIC database and laboratory test data to validate the algorithm. The experimental results showed that the proposed method could accurately extract the feature points and detect PTT, and the PTT detection accuracies of the measurements and the database samples were 99.1% and 97.5%, respectively. So the proposed method could be better than the traditional methods.
Objective
To summarize the clinical characteristics of interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features (IPAF).
Methods
The interstitial lung disease (ILD) patients diagnosed in our department between January 2010 and August 2013 were retrospectively analyzed to screen out the patients with IPAF.The clinical manifestations, laboratory examination, imaging, pulmonary function and treatment were summarized.
Results
In 254 ILD patients, 25 patients met the diagnosis criteria of IPAF, and 26 patients were diagnosed with definite connective tissue diseases associated ILD (DCTD-ILD). There were differences in arthralgia, sicca symptoms, mechanic’s hand, positive antinuclear antibodies, anti-CCP antibodies and residual lung volume between the IPAF patients and the DCTD-ILD patients (all P < 0. 05). Five IPAF patients were revealed hug or “pancake” the diaphragm in their chest high resolution CT radiographs. The microscopic performance showed that diffuse thickened with collagen fiber, alveolar wall thickening with marked interstitial lymphocyte inflammatory cells infiltration, and granulation tissue that filled bronchiolar lumina. The patients were pathologically diagnosed with nonspecific interstitial pneumonia (NSIP) overlap organized pneumonia (OP). During following-up, the progression-free survival time of the IPAF patients was significant longer and that of the DCTD-ILD patients [(14.32±5.74)months vs. (10. 31± 3. 70) months, P < 0. 05].
Conclusions
If an ILD patient has mechanic’s hand, positive antinuclear antibodies or NISP overlap OP in image, the diagnosis of IPAF should be considered. IPAF have slower disease progression and better prognosis than DCTD-ILD.
ObjectiveTo analyze the clinical characteristics and geographical distribution of Keshan disease in Chongqing city for prevention and disease control.
MethodsWe collected the clinical data of patients with Keshan disease from 2008 to 2012 in Liangping, Shizhu, Fengdu and Dianjiang counties as well as Wanzhou district of Chongqing city including the medical history, physical examination, results of laboratory tests to analyze the clinical characteristics and geographical distribution.
ResultsFifty-eight patients were included from Liangping (n=21), Shizhu (n=25), Fengdu (n=11) and Dianjiang (n=1). The number of patients with potential and chronic Keshan disease was 16 and 42, respectively. The average age of patients was 54.91±15.53 years. The proportion above age 60 was 32.76% and below age 10 was 3.45%. The patients had main clinical signs as heart enlargement (36.76%), low-weak first heart sound (22.41%), systolic murmur (10.34%), arrhythmia (8.62%), etc. Abnormal ECG detection rate was 98.28%, with common types followed by sinus rhythm (37.93%), complete right bundle branch block (25.86%), ST-T changes (24.14%), left ventricular hypertrophy (15.52%), atrial fibrillation (13.79%), occasional ventricular premature (10.34%), T changes (10.34%), sinus bradycardia (8.62%), and incomplete right bundle branch block (6.90%). X-ray results showed that heart enlargement accounted for 82.76%. The ratios of mild, moderate and significant expansion of the heart were 46.55%, 27.59%, and 8.62%, respectively.
ConclusionIn recent years, most patients with Keshan disease in Chongqing are chronic type at older age. The main clinical symptom is heart enlargement with high abnormal ECG detection rate.
